The CLARITY Act, the most important crypto market structure bill in US history, cleared the Senate Banking Committee on May 14 in a 15-9 bipartisan vote. All 13 Republicans backed it, joined by Democrats Ruben Gallego and Angela Alsobrooks. That gets the bill out of committee and into the next phase, but the work that decides whether it becomes law is still ahead, not behind. The House already passed an earlier version 294-134 last July, so the Senate is the gating factor.

What the bill actually does is divide the digital asset universe into three buckets and assign each to a regulator. Tokens whose value comes from a working blockchain, Bitcoin, Ether, Solana and similar, get classified as digital commodities and go to the CFTC. Tokens sold like startup equity rounds, where a centralized team raises money and promises to build something, stay with the SEC as investment contracts. Stablecoins get joint SEC and CFTC oversight that builds on the GENIUS Act framework Trump signed last July. For the first time, every major asset has a designated cop instead of two agencies arguing about who owns what.

The next step is a merge. The Senate Banking and Senate Agriculture Committees are working from different drafts and have to find a single text that both chambers will sign off on. The thorniest open issue is ethics. Democrats led by Kirsten Gillibrand will not move the bill without a section addressing conflict-of-interest concerns, and there are unresolved law enforcement provisions in parallel. Both Democratic supporters in committee made clear their yes votes were conditional and may not carry to the Senate floor.

The floor vote needs 60 to overcome a filibuster, which is the real test. There is no official date set, but the working window is June, with August as the outer deadline most Senate watchers reference. If the Senate passes a merged bill, the House has to reconcile any changes from what it passed last summer. Some industry timelines floated a July 4 signing target. That is ambitious. A June-July Senate vote with House reconciliation in late summer feels more realistic given the schedule.

Even if the bill is signed this year, nothing changes immediately for traders. Agency rulemaking, public comment windows, and compliance phase-ins mean enforceable rules will not exist until 2027 at the earliest. What the law does on day one is give every digital asset a defined home, a defined regulator, and a defined rulebook in development. That alone changes how exchanges list tokens, how lawyers advise issuers, and how institutional desks size positions. Predictability is the actual product.

The market mostly already prices that this becomes law. BTC sits at $77K, ETH at $2,116, the stablecoin market keeps growing under the GENIUS framework. What the next two months will reprice is the speed and the cleanliness of the path. A 60-plus vote with a workable ethics compromise opens the door to a 2027 regulated market structure. A stall on the floor pushes the entire timeline into next year and reintroduces the regulatory uncertainty the bill is supposed to end.